Profile

As a child, Melissa L. Martin, M.D., MPH, was a singer who performed at Lincoln Center, a part of attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. The school is known as the basis for the setting of the movie "Fame."

While he was growing up in Washington, D.C., there was a running joke in Clifton Porter's family. His mother would go on a "work trip," and his family would say that "six months later there would be news" from the region where she went.

Growing up in a big family, Deborah Green's tenacious spirit developed out of necessity: "As one of six kids, I was always vying for my parents' attention," says the executive vice president of operations and chief operating officer at the Chicago-based American Health Information Management Association.

While Brown University Professor Vince Mor's accomplishments may be heralded in the long-term care profession, what may be less known is his dedicated work with the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

Michael D. Gore made great strides professionally this spring, but it also was a season of sadness for the rising long-term care leader. His grandmother died at the age of 87 after spending her last weeks in the Lincoln Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Hamlin, WV. Gore was the center's executive director at the time.

When Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) was around 4 years old, she asked for a doctor's kit. But growing up in a working class family in Glen Burnie, MD, the future nurse and Congressman didn't know how to pursue her healthcare dreams.

Everything Mary Leary needed to know about tenacity and resilience, she learned at home. Her father lived a full life despite injuries from World War II that left him fully disabled and forced him to relearn how to walk and talk.

For those who work with Medicare beneficiaries, Judith Stein is a well-known powerhouse. Since founding the Center for Medicare Advocacy in 1986, she's led numerous major cases involving Medicare denials.

As a child, Adrienne Mims, M.D., MPH, thought about being a lawyer. But when her beloved grandmother died of cervical cancer when she was in high school, she redirected her attention to a career in healthcare.

When he entered nursing school, Steve Proctor was answering a call to serve others that he first heard years earlier. As a child growing up near Lake Huron, Proctor suffered from severe allergies and asthma and was in and out of doctors' offices. A series of shots helped him overcome his condition, and he saw that healthcare workers could change lives.

Of the many remarkable moments in Aysha Kuhlor's life, one of the biggest arrived in 1994. She went to a party in New York City a week before she was planning to go back to London, where she had a job and was in nursing school. She met a man named Francis. They were married six weeks later. As to why she agreed to stay in the United States and get married, "I think it was all the promises," Kuhlor says, laughing.

If your first role model is a parent, then Mike Rich, 49, learned early what it takes to be a long-term care administrator. His mother, Donna, "was the type of administrator who went to work early," he says. "Back then, administrators did a lot of the hands-on work. They did rounds, they made beds. "She would come home and feed the six of us and then go back to do dishes. In the '70s, she was a regional director of operations in a time that most of those executives were men," he says.

Ron Arrison knows why he works at the interdenominational King's Daughters and Sons Home. "I believe God sent me here," he says. The former hospital administrator says he planned to stay a year. That was in 1987.

Over the past 63 years, 11 presidents have come and gone, wars have been won and lost, and the long-term care industry has experienced a roller-coaster of changes. But one thing has remained consistent: Nora Morant has served residents at Charles Morris Nursing and Rehabilitation Center of the Jewish Association on Aging.

What most people know about Francis Kirley pertains to his success: how he is the American Health Care Association PAC chairman, and how he created one of the top 25 nursing home chains in the United States, Nexion Health.

Robin Arnicar has been on an accelerated life plan. By age 6, she knew she wanted to be a nurse. By 17, she had started working in her first nursing home as a licensed practical nurse. At 18, she was married. By the time she was 22, she was a divorced single mother who owned a home.

From an early age onward, Judy Feder learned how to stick up for herself. The third of four girls raised by an English immigrant salesman and a bookkeeper mother, Feder says she was told by her father to "stand up for what I believe in, speak out and always look people straight in the eye."

The new leader of the American Hospital Association's Governing Council for Long-Term Care and Rehabilitation has been a chief executive officer for the past 15 years. But at her core, Patricia Ostaszewski still considers herself a nurse.